Home users should be cautious that they are as much likely vulnerable to DOS attacks just like any other organizations. DOS ranges from flooding a network to disrupting connections between two legitimate machines. This attack could essentially disable your computer and slow down the performance thus affecting the stability of your computer. A major risk caused by DOS attack is the loss of availability to information, when information becomes inaccessible to an authorized  user.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Agent

Lately, home users' PCs have become targets for DDOS agents. Recent reports by  reveals there is an increasing number of compromises on home users' PC which are then used as launching ground for attacking other systems in a distributed denial of service. In a distributed denial of service, a few compromised PCs are used as DDOS agent by using Trojan programs and they are instructed by a single “handler” to launch denial of service. Thus your computer is just a convenient tool or a contributor in a larger attack. A new DOS program, the Tribe Flood Network is installed in compromised computers weeks or months before the attack. Another DDOS tool known as "Knight" was found on approximately 1500 hosts as reported by CERT Advisory CA-2001-20. This tool also uses IRC as the control channel.

Email spoofing 

Home users are also vulnerable to the threat of email spoofing. When someone spoofs your email, it means that he/she is sending a fraud email message making it appears to come from one legal sender when actually it comes from another illegal sender. The main purpose of such malicious act can be to impersonate an actual user into making a damaging statement or revealing confidential information, thus risking the confidentiality of the information. An example is as an email claiming from your ISP requesting your username/password or account information or to change your password.

Worms transmitted via email attachments Windows users are exposed to the threat of worms and other types of malicious code which are often spread as attachments to e-mail messages, particularly via Microsoft email programs. An example is the Melissa virus, discovered in April 1999 which spread precisely because it originated from a familiar address. Also, malicious codes can be distributed in amusing or attractive programs. Another example is the wide spread of W32SIRCAM worm, discovered in July 2001, which propagates via Microsoft Outlook email programs and comes in various attractive attachments loaded with personal files belonging to the victim and is a temptation to any users to open the attachment.

 

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